Tremors keep crust-dwelling microbes alive

Earthquakes don’t always mean death and destruction – at least for the microbes deep in the crust. Regular rumblings could be what enables them to stay alive, and maybe even Martian bugs too.

Earth’s crust is known to host hardy bacteria even several kilometres below the surface. These cells have no sun or organic material to sustain them, so they feed off the chemical energy in reactive molecules like hydrogen dissolved in the water seeping out of the rock. This means their growth and survival is limited by the flow of nutrients from deeper sources.

Now Norman Sleep and Mark Zoback …

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